Veterans Day: Remember these stories, past today

Veterans Day: Remember these stories, past today
 Returning vets' stories range from homelessness and unemployment to success
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2013

Every day should be Veterans Day.

But instead, we tell our military vets once a year, “Thanks for your service.”

But not every veteran can say the same to the government we elected to serve them. No group of Americans seems more underserved than the men and women who have served.

Veterans Day might be a good day to launch the battle to change all that.

I remember feeling ashamed and outraged two years ago when I first met Pearl Harbor veteran James Blakely, 91, living alone in a rusty trailer without electricity or running water in a junk yard on Buffalo Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. How could it be that an American sailor, a mess cook for fellow black sailors in a segregated U.S. Navy in World War II as the Japanese dropped their bombs, winds up 60 years later living no better than a stray dog?

To their credit, mere days after Blakely’s story appeared in the Daily News, the Black Veterans for Justice, in conjunction with the City’s Department of Veterans Affairs, had housed Blakely in a clean, safe apartment with a home attendant.

James Blakely will ride in the Veterans Day Parade this year.

“If that story didn’t appear in the Daily News, I’d still be in that junk yard,” Blakely says now.

“Instead I’m in a nice apartment and I got married in City Hall on Aug. 7th to my wife, Bonita. But I think it’s a disgrace that there are still so many veterans out there homeless.”

TODD MAISEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS The Rev. James Blakely is a Pearl Harbor veteran who, at 91, was living in a trailer in the back of a scrap yard on Buffalo Avenue in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Now, he's back on his feet -- and recently married.

Nicole Goodwin joined the Army in 2001. It helped prepare her for the battle against homelessness.

After serving in the Marines, Daniel Ward was told he was "overqualified" for a job as a Tennessee tree trimmer. After moving to New York, he landed a job counseling other vets.

Vietnam vet Kevin Burns rose from homelessness to a million-dollar home after learning how to rehab houses.

Facing a financial mess, Peter Latourette joined the 69th Infantry reserves. While on active duty, he made some $250,000 in the stock market.

Vietnam Vet George Ryan searches traveling Memorial Wall at the Intrepid for name of his friend, Johnny Shears, who was killed in Vietnam.

"Ripley's Believe it or Not" dubbed Ted Rosen "The Indestructible Man" during World War II. Rosen says he's always hated the nickname.
read their stories here